INTELLIGENCE, THINKING AND PERSONALITY

1
INTELLIGENCE, THINKING AND PERSONALITY

• SOCIAL-COGNITIVE THEORIES OF PERSONALITY

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DISPOSITIONS AND SITUATIONS

• Traits are a kind of disposition
• so Trait Theories of personality emphasise
  enduring properties of individuals in explaining
  the behaviour of those individuals
• Other approaches to behaviour, such a learning
  theory, emphasise the role of situations in
  explaining behaviour

3
THE FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR

• According to Attribution Theory we tend to
  overemphasise the role of dispositions in
  explaining the behaviour of other people, at the
  expense of the role of situations
• So, maybe, the emphasis on traits in Personality
  research is misplaced?

4
SOCIAL LEARNING THEORIES OF PERSONALITY

• Learning Theory (Classical and Instrumental
  Conditioning, etc.) influenced Social Learning
  theories of personality/social behaviour
• With the general shift towards cognitively-based
  theories, these theories became social-cognitive
  theories of personality (see, especially, Albert
  Bandura, Walter Mischel)

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SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORIES

• Derived from Learning Theory as applied to Social
  Behaviour
• So, they emphasise social determinants of
  behaviour
• And, they recognise the situation-specificity of
  behaviours
• And, they recognise the importance of systematic
  research
• Incorporate Cognitive notions
• So, they emphasis notions such as beliefs,
  expectancies, goals
• And, they move away from notions such as external
  reinforcement (learning need not require an overt
  reward, e.g. in observational learning/modelling)
• Learning to delay gratification is regarded as
  particularly important in personal development

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SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORIES - cont

• Recognise that people are active agents
• Partly influenced by humanistic approaches (see
  later)
• So, place an emphasis on competencies and skills
• And on motivational factors, which interact with
  cognitive factors (compare belief-desire
  psychology)
• Mischel has recently emphasised the importance of
  incorporating emotions into an overall theory
  (and he now talks about CAPS - the cognitive
  affective personality system)

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SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORIES - cont

• Roots in
• Social Learning Theory (see earlier slide)
• Especially Bandura
• Critique of Trait Theories
• Especially Mischel

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MISCHELS (1968) CRITIQUE OF TRAIT THEORIES

• On the basis of empirical studies, Mischel argued
  that only 5 - 10 of the variability of peoples
  behaviour across situations could be explained by
  personality traits
• This critique led to the person-situation
  controversy

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TRAIT STABILITY

• Trait stability across time (for similar
  situations) is quite strong
• E.g. McCrae and Costa argue that measurements on
  the Big Five personality dimensions are stable
  over time
• Trait stability across situations is less strong
• Partly because it is not appropriate to behave in
  the same way in all situations (e.g. an
  aggressive person is not always aggressive)

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TRAIT STABILITY - cont

• Epstein (1979, 1980)
• single measures (of a trait in a situation) may
  be unreliable, so there could be more consistency
  across situations than Mischel was able to show
• underlying causes of behaviour in different
  situations could be more consistent than the
  behaviour itself
• Or there could be an interaction of traits and
  situation

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PERSON-SITUATION INTERACTIONS

• People may behave differently in different
  situations, but relatively consistently in types
  of situation
• The social-cognitive approach focus on situations
  as they appear to the person in them, not
  necessarily as they objectively are
• Mischel suggests IFTHEN profiles for
  individuals
• IF person A perceives him/herself to be in
  situation of type Y, THEN they expect certain
  kinds of things to happen and will be likely to
  behave in such-and-such a way
• The profile constitutes a Behavioural Signature

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PERSON-SITUATION INTERACTIONS - EXAMPLES

• From Pervin (1976)
• Person A reports feeling relaxed and extraverted
  when with a peer-group, but tense and introverted
  at home
• Person B reports feeling angry and domineering at
  work, but tender and nurturing at home
• Shoda, Mischel Wright (1994) report similar
  findings for objective test data
• Furthermore, two children with the same overall
  score on, e.g. aggressiveness, may have quite
  different situational profiles for aggressiveness

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RECIPROCAL DETERMINISM

• Bandura introduced the concept of reciprocal
  determinism to capture the claim of
  social-cognitive theory that peoples behaviour
  is influenced both by external forces (compare
  learning theory) and by internal forces (which
  lead them to shape situations, including the
  behaviour of others) (compare trait theories)

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THE SELF

• Bandura, in particular, also emphasises that a
  persons concept of him- or herself (in the form
  of self-efficacy beliefs) also varies from
  situation to situation
• Self-efficacy beliefs play a key role in
  motivating behaviour (people tend to try to
  achieve what they believe they can achieve)